I use the documentary mediums of video and photography as tools to explore the social
structures which constitute human interaction within a culture. To expose collective
consciousness and patterns of behavior, I often ask strangers to become participants and
collaborators in my performance-based projects. The immediacy of my working method,
wherein participants are invited to act freely and with little or no direction before the camera,
fosters an improvisational approach that reveals hidden aspects of these structures and allows
individual voices to be heard. The resulting multi-channel video installations often consist of
series of case studies which focus on questions of the strategies of our self-definition that are
often rooted in our economic, social and cultural surroundings.
For my latest socio-political video installation "The One Hundred Dollar Project" I collaborate
with working class communities in all the G8+5 member countries. The project investigates the
question: "How many people can be hired with $100, for one hour, and what will they do during
that hour?". The installation examines the sociological implications of the lives of modern day
working people across borders. As expected, one sees that I was able to hire different numbers
of people based on the economic power of each country, who, however, often engage in similar
activities (e.g a card game) and who dress alike despite their different cultural backgrounds.
The performances, which are captured by a stationary video camera, form an ongoing series of
group portraits that will extend to a total of 13.
My goal is to find and expose how the human psyche is shaped by cultural, political, and
economic surroundings.